The Senate has a message for international leaders who want the United States to give developing nations tens of billions of dollars to help with global warming.

Forget about it.

“They’ve got to come up with their own,” said Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.). “We’re not asking them for money, as far as I know.”

The U.S. negotiating team in Copenhagen has been working overtime to reach a climate change agreement. But back home in Congress, many lawmakers are happy to play the Grinch.

“We need to make sure we’re taking care of our country first,” said Sen. Mark Begich (D-Alaska), who wants to see the U.S. government send tens of billions of dollars to his state to help it cope with the destructive impacts of climate change. “Alaska is ground zero.”

Try telling that to African leaders. They walked out of negotiations in Copenhagen this week because they felt officials were ignoring the serious droughts, malnutrition and other suffering that climate change will cause in their countries.

Or to the leaders of Tuvalu, who believe that a rising sea level caused by global warming will force the evacuation of their entire South Pacific island nation within the next 50 years.

“It is an irony of the modern world that the fate of the world is being determined by some senators in the U.S. Congress,” said Ian Fry, Tuvalu’s delegate to the talks.

But those international concerns carry little weight in Washington — at least as compared with domestic concerns about the Democrats’ cap-and-trade bill.

“If you want to pass a bill, I would focus on how it creates jobs in America,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), part of a bipartisan group crafting a climate bill. “If you’re worried about developing nations and how much money you’re going to send them, you’re off track already.”

“Our commitment to climate change will be, if we pursue it, at significant cost to our industries as they already exist here,” said budget hawk Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.). “We’ll be bearing a pretty big [economic] burden just doing that.”

U.S. negotiators have been unwilling to move beyond congressional opinion in the international talks — a stance that’s given them little leeway to meet the world’s demands in Copenhagen.

Developing nations believe the United States owes “climate reparations” to poor nations to compensate for its many decades as the world’s top polluter. Developing countries in the Southern Hemisphere have polluted the least, they argue, but will suffer the worst consequences of global warming.

The Obama administration has requested $1.2 billion in this year’s budget for the U.S. contribution to a $10 billion global climate fund. Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), a sponsor of climate legislation, has proposed increasing the U.S. contribution to $3 billion in 2011. That’s still less than the $10.5 billion pledged by the European Union last Friday. And it falls far short of the hundreds of billions of dollars in annual payments requested by United Nations officials and leaders of the developing world.

European negotiators and some developing nations would also like the United States to commit to making deeper reductions in its greenhouse gas emissions.

The European Union has promised to cut emissions by 20 percent below 1990 levels and by 30 percent if a strong global agreement is reached in Copenhagen. So far, American negotiators have proposed cutting U.S. emissions by roughly 4 percent below 1990 levels over the same period — a goal in line with legislation that passed the House in late June.

Significantly increasing those commitments is basically off the table in the Senate, Democrats said.

And international pressure certainly won’t help get a bill through, said Graham.

“I would just say to climate change enthusiasts, let the Senate work its will,” said Graham. “We are not going to respond to concerns from outside forces.”

Rather than increase their bids at the talks, U.S. negotiators have focused on getting stringent monitoring requirements that would allow them to verify emissions reductions pledged by developing nations.

Senior administration officials have described their progress on that issue as “bumpy,” but it’s a key to winning support in the Senate for a climate bill. Senate Democrats remain deeply skeptical that emissions reduction commitments pledged by developing nations will result in an actual decrease of greenhouse gases. And why would the United States bother to cut its emissions, they argue, if China and India are only going to increase theirs?

“We need the United States, but we also need the developing world,” said Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.), a strong advocate for a climate bill. “We have a responsibility. I acknowledge that, but it’s not in isolation.”